And those damn message boards have got to go if they are gonna use them.

They do use them...when there is an ozone alert.

I am a surveyor and a lot of times I am working on I-65 between Alabaster and the Shelby County Airport, and those overhead signs are never used to inform motorists that surveyors are ahead and may be crossing traffic lanes, even though we call ALDOT when we arrive to the job and when we leave. We are provided with smaller portable message signs to inform motorists of our presence, but the big overhead signs either blink or say something about the ozone alert.

Maybe when Birmingham gets a traffic center those signs can be put to good use. A large part of the ITS improvements have not been constructed yet.

What do you guys think of the MLS (Major League Soccer)? Not necessarily to do with B'ham but the whole league in general. Just a fad or possibly a real viable and marketable product in the U.S.? I'm not too sure about it myself. Talk amongst yourselves.

I was going through a forum photo thread that was mostly Southside pictures. I can't remember who snapped them, but the thread must have had a hundred photos of Southside/UAB/Highland Park. A couple of the photos were awesome... until you see the dangling lines and rusty transformers. It was gritty as hell.

Perhaps I've become to accustomed to D.C., where the utilities are for the most part buried in all of the neighborhoods.

Sounds like one of LSyd's threads. He's a big fan of grit and probably included those "dangling lines and rusty transformers" on purpose whereas another photographer might try to avoid photographing that kind of stuff if at all possible.

:hilarious

probably is mine. oh no, power lines and rusty transformers, how sad and gritty.

and oh yeah, i'm getting excited about returning to the ham. hopefully there'll be some construction around my area of highland park to watch, and something showing on the st. vincent's expansion, and city fed lit and glowing.

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__________________
"The vapors! The fainting couch! Those heartless elitists are burning down the plantation with their logic and arithmetic!"

As far as I know, their local news show will continue to focus on West AL, but some of the original programs should carry wider interest. Some of the shows they produce now are Tommy Wilcox Outdoors (which is replayed on Comcast/Charter Sports Southeast (CSS) ) and Tider Insider TV. They're also adding a weekly fashion program, and casting for a co-host has been extended to Sept. 7 : http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/p...8004/-1/wvua13

Since they have such a strong focus on community-based programming, it would be interesting if someone from Birmingham worked with them to create an "Urban Alabama" show, showcasing the sort of things we see on this forum :
new economic developments, transit, urban architecture, etc.

Well, for the most part, if you aren't getting into the drugs, or making drug deals, etc, etc.. You should be safe, although there are exceptions. Most people who get killed (atleast in Bham) deals with drugs, from what I hear.

"The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program (ADAM) measures the extent of drug and
alcohol use in the high-risk population of people who have been arrested and booked as
adults in city and county detention facilities operated by local police and sheriff
departments." For Birmingham, Alabama in 2003, 530 arrestees were interviewed and 87.5% of those tested by urinalysis. 66.1% of adult male arrestees tested positive for at least one illegal drug: 34.3% tested positive for crack or powder cocaine, 44.6% for marijuana, 1.2% for methamphetamine, and 8.3% for heroin.

This isn't just murder arrests, of course. I couldn't immediately find a breakdown of homicides by "contributing factor" or motive, though I know the CDC collects those statistics for the FBI. I know that when I lived in New Orleans and the murder count soared well over 300 that the Times-Picayune published statistics that the overwhelming majority of murders were the result of illegal business deals and lover's spats. Very few victims were targeted from outside the perpetrator's immediate circle. Two factors that tend to mirror homicide rates are unemployment and temperature.